


Full Disclosure

by Luthien



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 16:21:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/700233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthien/pseuds/Luthien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifty years later, M's eldest granddaughter visits Q to discuss his recently-published memoirs.</p><p>Note: This story is a follow-up to Telanu's excellent <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/32653">Sharing the Road</a> series. It won't make a lot of sense unless you read that first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full Disclosure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Telanu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telanu/gifts).



> This story is a follow-up to Telanu's excellent [Sharing the Road](http://archiveofourown.org/series/32653) series. It won't make a lot of sense unless you read that first. The main character is M's granddaughter Sophie, who appears briefly in Telanu's 'La Vita Nuova'.
> 
> Many, many thanks to Telanu for letting me play in her sandbox for a little while, and for beta-ing and cheer-leading.

_Oxford, England_  
2062  


"Good lord," Sophie says, even though there's no one there to hear her. "I don't believe it."

But that's a lie. She does believe it, or at least some of it. She just can't believe that she's reading about it. She wipes a hand over her eyes, and makes herself look away from the holo-screen.

Bright summer sunshine streams in through the kitchen window. Today's going to be warm, one of those rare perfect summer days, if the forecast is to be believed. It's early to be up, most particularly for a Saturday, but Sophie likes her rituals, one of which is to sit down with a cup of tea and browse through the news services first thing in the morning. It's a habit started years and years ago, before she even came to England, back when she was young, when some of the news services were still being published on paper — though she'd always preferred reading on her phone — in a country and a life she's long left far behind.

It's a habit that persisted and flourished all through her academic career. She's retired now, and there's no particular need to be reading at all, much less to be out of bed at what should be an ungodly hour, but she still can't resist checking up on all the latest book reviews – non-fiction, it goes without saying. She's been hoarding them all week, waiting to hit them all in one go as part of the Saturday ritual. And so, today, she's found herself reading a review of a book she never expected to see – but, in hindsight, she supposes she should have.

Her eyes stray back to the holo-screen. This book is a memoir rather than the history that is more strictly her field. The events described in it occurred long enough ago to count as history, she supposes, if they occurred at all. She snorts. Most likely, this book should be tagged as fiction. It's hard to believe that it could be cold, hard historical fact – though of course she's been a historian for long enough to know that there's no such thing. History is about _why_ , much more than _what_. It's about analysing human reaction to what's going on, and human perception of events, and gathering the evidence to support your case about 'what really happened'.

Well, the reactions and perceptions in the large-scale drama described by the author of this particular book are interesting, to say the very least. And so are the identities of the key players. Sophie still can't quite believe what she's seeing, but the words in front of her remain unchanged. She sets her teacup down on the kitchen table without taking her eyes from the screen — and misses. She curses as tepid liquid splashes her leg a split second before the cup smashes on the floor.

Still cursing under her breath, she goes to fetch the dustpan and brush. And the mop. Once the shattered porcelain is swept up and deposited in the bin, and the floor mopped clean, Sophie feels in desperate need of another cup of tea. She puts on the kettle, and leans back against the edge of the kitchen counter as she waits for the water to boil.

The names can't be disputed. Every other detail in that book might be questionable, but the names… If those are true – and Sophie's gut reaction tells her that they are – then how much of the rest of it is the truth?

Beatrice Masters and James Bond: she's always wondered how they'd met. Whatever had forged that… well, that _bond_ between Granny and James Bond, it definitely hadn't happened over tea and biscuits at the Foreign Office. In her old age, Granny could just about pass for a retired civil servant, when she tried, but Bond? There'd never been anything remotely civil about him, at least not that Sophie had ever seen, even if the book strongly implies that Bond was quite the ladies' man.

It's hard – impossible – to imagine Granny as _that_ sort of 'lady', and yet, there's the connection between them to consider. Nothing could break that. Not Granny's moving back to Hong Kong in retirement, not Bond's "moving up the ranks and doing quite well in his career," as Granny had put it once. Not even Granny's death.

Sophie breathes out harshly through her teeth, impatient with herself. All this guesswork and gut reaction won't get her anywhere. She's a historian. She needs _evidence_ to build upon before her speculation will be worth a damn.

She taps another holo-screen open on the kitchen counter. Modern privacy screening is a pain, but it's not for nothing that Sophie has spent a working lifetime digging through written sources for information that people didn't want to be found. Two minutes later, she leaves a voice message for the author of the book: "Mr Hetherington. Hello, I'm sorry to bother you, but my name is Sophie Bolling. I think you know why I'm calling, and I'd be grateful if you could spare the time for a chat – at your convenience, of course. Thank you."

She shuts down the holo-screen as soon as she's left the message, and goes to make the tea. The household hub bleeps just as she's pouring the boiling water onto the tea leaves. Sophie puts the top on the teapot and leaves the tea to steep.

She taps the hub: one new message. It's a text message – an old-fashioned form of communication, but one that Sophie appreciates. It's been a long time since she preferred the spoken word over the written. The message is also very much in keeping with the sort of man that she suspects Charles Hetherington to be. It's brief, and to the point:

_Today, 11.00am. Come for morning tea._

The message is followed by an address in Gloucestershire, less than an hour's drive away. She wonders if he knows that she lives in Oxford, and immediately chastises herself for being stupid. Of course he knows.

It's a long time since Sophie last thought of herself as stupid, but all sorts of memories have been churned up already today. And if she drives down to Gloucestershire to take tea, there will, no doubt, be more.

If. There is no _if_.

Sophie goes to get a clean mug, and pours herself a cup of tea. And then she sits down at the table to work out her plan of attack.

***

Sophie arrives in the village where Charles Hetherington lives with almost fifteen minutes to spare. This turns out to be a fortunate circumstance because it takes her nearly that long to find his house. She passes the bottom of the laneway three times before she realises that it continues on around the corner past the village shop-cum-post office. The laneway gets narrower as she drives along, thick green hedgerows encroaching on either side, until it suddenly opens up onto a circular driveway, with a large, red brick house crouching at the far side of it. _Victorian_ , Sophie identifies the house at a glance. And well-maintained. There are some large, established fruit trees growing along the driveway: apple trees mostly, and also a few plum trees by the looks of it, all of them beautifully shaped, a sure sign of having been well-pruned within the last twelve months. There are neatly presented beds of petunias and marigolds along the front of the house, away from the shade of the trees, further testament to a gardener's loving care.

It's all terribly nice, terribly old-fashioned, terribly _safe_ , to the point of being twee. Sophie supposes that that is the point. She rings the bell, and steps back from the door to wait.

Sophie's just beginning to wonder if maybe she'd somehow misread or misremembered the appointed time in Charles Hetherington's message when the door swings open. It's a stout middle-aged woman in a floral print dress, wearing a politely-bland expression of enquiry.

"I'm Sophie Bolling. Mr Hetherington is expecting me?" It's supposed to be a statement, not a question, but something about this situation is making her feel uncharacteristically hesitant.

"Ah, yes. Ms Bolling. Please come in," the woman says, and steps back to allow Sophie in through the door. "Mr Hetherington is waiting for you in the conservatory, if you'd like to come this way."

Sophie follows the woman – who apparently isn't going to bother to introduce herself – along a sun-drenched hallway that seems to run the length of the house. Along the way, Sophie catches glimpses of other rooms, all of them spacious, and all of them empty of people. The furnishings and wallpapers are tasteful in a very nice, taking-no-risks sort of way, if a little too floral in their design for Sophie's taste. It's as though the entire place has sprung to life from the pages of a Laura Ashley catalogue of forty or fifty years ago. There's nothing out of place, nothing _personal_ to be seen anywhere.

And then they reach the conservatory. It's a riot of greenery and bright flowers, arranged with no apparent rhyme or reason. Delicate pink frangipani blossoms grow next to huge tangerine hibiscus, side by side with citrus trees and orchids and ferns with great, sweeping fronds. Nothing is orderly, nothing is carefully placed, and humidity hangs heavy in the air.

A man sits at a small round table not far from the door. His clothing is dark and nondescript, but he's wearing a thick-lensed pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and he has a shock of pure white hair that would make him stand out anywhere. He gets to his feet haltingly. He's of average height, but his frame is lean, verging on thin, which makes him seem taller. He's certainly tall enough that Sophie has to look up at him – but then, the same can be said for most people.

As she moves closer, Sophie can see all the years of age and experience on Hetherington's face. His has been a life well-lived, and now it's drawing to a close. He has to be at least eighty, but his voice is clear and strong as he holds out a hand and says, "Dr Bolling? How good of you to come at such short notice. Charles Hetherington."

"How good of you to invite me on such short notice," Sophie says in return as they shake hands."

"Not at all, not at all," Hetherington says. He turns to the middle-aged woman, who is waiting by the door. "If you wouldn't mind getting us some tea, Madeleine?"

"Of course," the woman – Madeleine – says, and disappears back into the main part of the house.

"My housekeeper," Hetherington says, by way of explanation, and then gestures to the chair opposite his own for Sophie to take a seat at the table with him.

Sophie waits until Hetherington has painstakingly – and painfully, it looks like – lowered himself back into his chair before she speaks again. "You know who I am," she says, and this time makes very sure that what she says is a statement and not a question.

"Of course," he says simply, with the hint of a smile. "I remember your grandmother vividly."

"She always was. Vivid, I mean," Sophie agrees. "Amongst other things."

"You've read my book?" he asks.

"Excerpts," Sophie replies.

"Ah. Perhaps you should read all of it before we continue much farther with this conversation."

"No. I'd much prefer to have this conversation now. If you don't mind, of course," she adds, in a belated effort at politeness.

Hetherington smiles properly then. He looks as though he's trying to hold back a laugh. "Even if you didn't look so much like her, you would have just quashed any lingering doubt that I might have entertained about your identity. I can hear her saying that."

Sophie doesn't smile. "That's… well, I don't think it's nice of you to say so, Mr Hetherington. Predictable, maybe. I'm not like her. I think you're getting me confused with my sister."

The smile vanishes from his face. "No, I'm not," he says quietly. "But that's the main reason you're here, isn't it? Your sister?"

"What would you know about my sister?" Sophie asks, and she has to bite down on her lower lip to keep it from trembling.

"Oh, I know quite a lot. Quite a lot indeed. I remember her even better than I remember your grandmother. Your sister worked for me. For a time."

"She never mentioned you."

"No, she wouldn't have."

"She never really told me anything, though. None of them did. Not Jeannie, or Granny. Or Mr Bond."

Hetherington leans forward in his chair, pensive, as he rests his chin on steepled fingers. "I'm surprised you were never scouted yourself. A woman of your talents would have been an asset."

"To whom, exactly? I'm a historian, Mr Hetherington, not a… a…" Sophie waves a hand and huffs impatiently.

"A glamorous secret agent? Don't worry. There were always precious few of that sort. I was very much a boffin, myself. Still am, I suppose." And there's that tiny smirk again at the corner of his mouth, self-deprecating in a way that only an Englishman of a very particular type can ever achieve.

"Precious few. Like Bond, you mean?"

"Yes, I mean like Bond. Agent 007. You met him, more than once. What did you think?"

"I didn't like him," Sophie says without hesitation.

Hetherington's eyebrows rise, and Sophie's pretty sure that she's surprised a real reaction out of him at last. "Most women," he says slowly, clearly picking his words with care, "didn't have that reaction to Bond. Most women liked him. Too much for their own good."

"Was my grandmother one of them?" Sophie asks the question, because she can't not ask it, but she's not sure if she wants to hear the answer. There is no good answer to that question, because, whatever James Bond was to her grandmother, the one thing that Sophie can be sure of is that dislike was not part of it, on either side.

"Good heavens, no!" Hetherington exclaims. "Their relationship was always an entirely professional one, at least before your grandmother retired, but it was clear that there was some fondness there. Must have been, for them to keep in touch afterwards."

"You mean a motherly sort of fondness?"

"No," Hetherington says.

Sophie feels sick to her stomach, but before she can press Hetherington to clarify what he's just said there's a tap at the door, and the housekeeper enters, pushing a trolley bearing quite a bit more than the promised tea. There is a myriad of cakes and sandwiches, enough to feed far more than just the two of them. The housekeeper has clearly been hard at work with the preparations since long before Sophie arrived. A large teapot in a striking Art Deco shape sits in the place of honour, right in the middle of the trolley. It's Staffordshire pottery; Sophie recognises the bold-coloured pattern as a Clarice Cliff Bizarre Ware design. There are matching cups and saucers, plus bread and butter plates and a sugar bowl and milk jug. The tea set would be completely out of place in the rest of the house, with its carefully inoffensive colour schemes and boring furniture; it seems right at home in the verdant chaos of the conservatory.

It's also worth a small fortune. Sophie can't imagine that there can be many complete tea sets like this still in use anywhere.

She waits while the housekeeper lays out a setting before each of them, before unloading the large serving plates full of food onto the table, then the sugar bowl and milk jug, and last of all the teapot.

"Will there be anything else, Mr Hetherington?" the housekeeper asks.

"No, that's fine, Madeleine. Thank you."

The housekeeper gives a firm little nod, and pushes the trolley back to the door. No one says another word until the door has clicked closed behind her.

"Shall I be Mother?" Hetherington asks brightly, taking up the teapot.

"Thank you," Sophie says.

Hetherington pours a cup of tea for each of them. Sophie shakes her head when he offers milk and sugar. She waits as he adds a sugar cube and a generous splash of milk to his cup before she raises hers to her lips. Despite its age and its rarity, this cup is sturdier to the touch than the cup that smashed on Sophie's kitchen floor this morning, but she's still nervous to pick it up. She takes an uncertain sip, and then smiles against the bright yellow rim as she tastes Earl Grey with its unmistakable twist of citrus.

"It was my grandmother's," Hetherington says, sitting back in his chair and regarding her over the rim of his teacup. "The tea set," he explains, nodding towards the teapot.

"It's lovely," Sophie says, quite sincerely.

"But we were discussing _your_ grandmother," Hetherington continues, skewering her with a sudden sharp look that's at odds with the harmless, affable old boffin image that he's been taking pains to project. He sips his tea, and eyes her expectantly.

Sophie sips her tea in turn, and remains silent until she returns her cup to its saucer. "Yes," she says, "we were talking about my grandmother. And about James Bond."

"I can't tell you much more than is in the book. The government's already displeased enough about that as it is," he adds with gentle understatement. The reviews of the book had mentioned the court case which the government had tried to bring against Hetherington to stop publication – and the gag order preventing the news services from reporting on it until now.

"I don't want to know anything that might be an official secret – or even anything that might be considered an unofficial secret," Sophie says, twisting her hands in her lap. "I just want to understand, a little better, who my grandmother was, I suppose. So that I can…"

"So that you can understand your sister, and her choices, a little better, hmmn?" Hetherington asks, but it's not really a question.

"And so that I can make sense of what happened to her," Sophie all but whispers, staring down into her teacup. After a moment, she picks it up and takes another sip of tea.

"I can tell you even less about your sister's activities than I can about your grandmother's," Hetherington says, having the cheek to sound apologetic.

"I know that!" Sophie snaps, looking up. "Sorry," she adds, in a calmer voice. "I still find it hard to mention my sister. To anyone."

"And yet here you are. Here we both are. Sandwich?"

Sophie blinks. Hetherington is holding out a plate of dainty, triangular sandwiches with the crusts removed.

"Thank you," she says, putting down her teacup and taking a sandwich. She bites into it. Cucumber. She should have expected that. It goes with the image, after all. Sophie wonders what that image is hiding, who the real man is behind it all, and what that man wants – what that man wants from her.

It's a good question, so she asks it: "What do you want?"

Hetherington raises his eyebrows again. "Blunt and to the point. And yet you claim to be unlike your grandmother."

" _And yet_ you haven't answered my question," Sophie points out.

"All in good time, Dr Bolling. All in good time." He takes a bite from his own sandwich, smiles at it in approval, and then finishes it off.

Sophie watches this little performance impassively. She waits.

Hetherington leans back in his chair, teacup in hand. "Before Madeleine arrived with the tea things, I believe you'd asked about the nature of your grandmother's… relationship, for want of a more specific term, with 007."

"And you'd told me that her feelings towards him weren't motherly."

"Indeed they weren't." Hetherington sips his tea.

"So, if not motherly… what, exactly?" Sophie asks. They're back at the question to which she doesn't want an answer, and somehow she's managed to ask it twice now.

"I don't know," says Hetherington. "I don't think anybody knew, including your grandmother and Bond. It wasn't something that fitted a conventional description."

Sophie wonders if that answer is better or worse than the other options. She almost wishes that Granny's feelings for Bond had been something as simple as an unwise late-life infatuation. But that still doesn't explain Bond's trips to see her in Hong Kong, at least twice a year, every year, for fifteen years. Until her grandmother died.

"Try," Sophie urges. "Try to describe it. What did you see, when you looked at the two of them?"

Hetherington smiles, and this time it has some proper warmth to it. "Respect, mainly," he says.

"Respect," Sophie repeats, strangely disappointed. However much she doesn't want to hear it, she was expecting something more. "Just that? That's all?"

"There's nothing "just" about earning your grandmother's respect – and, maybe especially, Bond's. True respect is probably the highest compliment that either of them could bestow on another person."

"I see."

"No, I don't think you do." Sophie opens her mouth to object, but before she can say anything, Hetherington continues: "And to answer your other question: no, that's not all. I don't think there are words to describe the bond that grew up between them. It's probably impossible for anyone who hasn't been in the sorts of situations… Well, the sorts of situations that your sister got to know too well."

"She was always the clever one," Sophie says. Her voice is loud. Louder than it was before, louder than Hetherington's, and far too loud amidst the green quiet of this room. "My sister. Jeannie. So very bright."

"She was brilliant," Hetherington agrees. "But you're a professor at Oxford. One doesn't achieve that by accident." He holds out a plate of macarons.

Sophie takes one, coloured an alarming beetroot shade.

"I _was_ a professor at Oxford. Not any more," she says, and bites through the hard outer shell and into the chewy centre of the macaron. It doesn't just look like beetroot, it _tastes_ like beetroot. Sweet beetroot. Sweet _raspberry_ beetroot.

Hetherington is watching her face carefully. Waiting for her reaction, she realises.

"What do you think?" he asks, and there's a gleam of childish delight dancing in his eyes. Sophie can easily imagine how he must have looked fifty years ago: one of those forever boyish men with something of the enthusiasm of an overgrown puppy whenever anything caught his interest.

"It's… unusual," Sophie says, struggling to find a neutral description.

Hetherington laughs. "That's the most diplomatic response they've received in some time. Madeleine makes them, these days, but it's my recipe."

Somehow, Sophie fails to be surprised at this explanation. She's tempted to just leave the rest of the macaron on her plate, but something in Hetherington's expression says that he's expecting her to do exactly that. Well, she's never been one to shy away from a challenge. Sophie dispatches the remains of the macaron in a number of small, ladylike, but very determined bites, and when she settles back in her chair afterwards, she feels calmer than she has since she walked in through the door.

"My sister was the reason that I had an academic career at all," Sophie says matter of factly. "She and my grandmother. Without either of them, I'd probably have spent a few more years partying in Hong Kong before finding some decent enough fellow of the right sort, and then dwindling into a wife." She sips at her tea, and watches for Hetherington's reaction. He's still giving away precious little.

"And instead you came to England, to Oxford, and…"

"Became what you now see before you, yes," Sophie agrees.

"Your grandmother's example I think I can understand – she became something of an historian in her later years, if I remember correctly – but your sister? She certainly had the intellect to forge a shining academic career, but not the interest. Not when I knew her, in any event."

"No, she didn't have the interest. Or, I think, the required temperament. But I didn't mean to imply that she ever considered an academic career, or that she encouraged me in mine – not until later, anyway."

She waits for Hetherington to say something to that, but he doesn't. He just sips his tea and regards her with his keen old eyes.

Sophie takes another sandwich. This one is egg and cress. Sophie supposes that it would take her back to her childhood, had her childhood been spent in England. As it is, an egg and cress sandwich is just a mild curiosity, a relic of a bygone age once read about in a book.

Once she's finished the sandwich, Sophie takes another sip of tea to fortify herself, and clears her throat to tell Hetherington the rest of it.

"I was the pretty one, you know, though it's hard to believe now."

"Not at all," Hetherington says gallantly.

Sophie ignores his comment. "I was always the pretty one and Jeannie was always the clever one. And that was fine – until Jeannie reached an age when she started thinking about what she'd study at university. Then Granny expressed an interest."

"Ah," Hetherington says.

"Yes. _Ah."_ Sophie drains the last of the tea in her cup and sets it down in the saucer. "No one ever criticised me for the choices I'd made up until then. Not my mother, nor my father, and most especially not Granny." She looks down at her hands, clasped tightly together in her lap. It's an effort, but she forces her fingers to release their grip, and then makes herself look Hetherington in the eye again.

"More tea?" he suggests gently.

Sophie hands over her cup and saucer gratefully. She waits until her second cup of tea is sitting in front of her before she attempts to speak again. Part of her cringes at the thought of opening up about such private, family matters to a complete stranger, even after almost fifty years. But, difficult as it is, it's still easier than talking to anyone she actually knows. And besides, there's a point to it. Hetherington knows things that she needs to know, things that no one else can possibly tell her.

"The year my sister turned seventeen. That was when it all changed. Suddenly there were conversations, _private_ conversations. Granny and Jeannie would be talking, but they'd go silent as soon as I entered the room." Sophie swallows and reaches for her purse. She unzips it, and fishes out a tissue.

"I see," Hetherington says, nodding. He picks up the milk jug and gives it his undivided attention as he adds more milk to his tea and then slowly stirs it in. He doesn't look back at her until she starts speaking again.

"You must understand, Mr Hetherington, that Jeannie was my sister, my _little_ sister… And suddenly it was as though she was moving past me, moving _beyond_ me. The worst of it wasn't even that I couldn't keep up, or that they didn't expect me to keep up; it was that they didn't even expect me to try. I was 'the pretty one' – and in their eyes there was nothing wrong with that. It was just that they valued other qualities far more."

"So you decided to go to university yourself. And you chose history because of your grandmother?"

Sophie snorts. "Yes. I was determined to better her in her area of expertise. It was only years later, after I graduated with my PhD, that I discovered that Granny never thought of herself as much of a historian. That's why she gave it up in the end. She did so hate being merely competent at it – at anything."

"I can well imagine."

"I never really thought a lot about what her life might have been like before she retired to Hong Kong. I mean, I knew she'd done, well, _been_ in your line of work, Mr Hetherington, and that she'd been quite high up at one time. And that that was why my sister… Well. Until this morning, I'd never considered that my grandmother might have been head of MI6, let alone for so many years."

"Whereas I find it hard to imagine her as anything else," Hetherington says.

"Did you ever see her again? After she retired, I mean. She did return to the UK from time to time. I remember that much." Sophie sips her tea. This second cup of Earl Grey is that much stronger for the extra time it's spent in the pot, and she can't ignore the astringent note against her tongue.

"She may have done so," Hetherington says, in a way that strikes Sophie as particularly disingenuous, "but I never met her again. That sort of thing – regular contact with serving agents after one has left the service – was not, and is not, encouraged."

"Mr Bond used to visit my grandmother regularly." They've already discussed it, but it's worth mentioning again. It's the one detail that Sophie keeps coming back to. It's the key to whatever it is that she needs to know. It has to be.

"As I believe we've determined, that was something of a special case."

"You mean that neither of them cared much for the rules?"

"I wouldn't say that, exactly. Your grandmother was very much a stickler for the rules, at least as they applied to other people. Bond, on the other hand… He tended to disregard the rules if they got in the way of whatever higher purpose he was pursuing at the time."

"And she was his boss?"

"Yes," Hetherington says, and doesn't try to hide his smile.

Sophie doesn't smile. She's getting tired of the veil of misty-eyed nostalgia with which the old man is trying to obscure everything. "Why did you invite me here today, Mr Hetherington? What do you want from me?"

"All in good time, my dear."

"No," Sophie says, and she puts down her cup with enough force that it rattles against the saucer. In any other circumstances, she would be all profuse apologies for such cavalier treatment of an antique. This time, her eyes never leave Hetherington's, and she says, "Now is the right time. Answer me. You think I know something, don't you? There's something that I know, or you think I know, that you want to find out. Why not just ask me? Who knows, I might even answer."

Hetherington doesn't seem annoyed at her bluntness. He doesn't even seem surprised. He regards her thoughtfully, head tilted to one side. "Time to call a spade a spade, hmmn?" he says, and sets his teacup down in its saucer, with rather more care than Sophie just displayed to hers. "Well, then. Here's a question to start with: Do you remember the day of your grandmother's funeral?"

"Of course," Sophie says.

"And did James Bond attend, do you recall?"

"Yes," Sophie says. She's not sure where this is going, and she's determined to keep her answers succinct and to give away as little as possible. If he wants information from her, he's going to have to work for it.

"Good," Hetherington says. "And do you remember the sort of mood that Bond was in that day? How did he strike you?"

"It was thirty-five years ago!" Sophie protests. "And I had other things on my mind at the time than the behaviour of a single guest I barely knew then and haven't seen since."

"But Bond _was_ present and you _do_ remember him," Hetherington says. His voice is suddenly a lot harder than before; 'implacable' is the word that springs to Sophie's mind. And he's watching her intently.

"Yes," Sophie admits. "Actually, I remember him clearly. He was very quiet, very self-contained but… Well."

"But what?"

"Why do you want to know this, Mr Hetherington? Oh, I don't mean that I expect you to admit to whatever nefarious purpose is motivating this whole exercise – I'm not so naïve as to expect that an experienced spymaster is going to reveal his greater purposes. I just really want to know why my memory of an event that took place more than three decades ago should be of any value at all." Sophie's breathing heavily by the time she gets to the end of her mini-tirade. She picks up her teacup, gripping the handle tightly, and gulps down a mouthful of tea.

"Because you may be the last person left alive who was there. Because Bond disappeared right after that – literally later that same night. Because he went off the grid, and there haven't been any verifiable sightings of him from that day to this." Hetherington counts the points off on his fingers, one by one.

"You're trying to find out what happened to him," Sophie says softly. She doesn't say "trying to find him" because the likelihood of Bond's still being alive now is as close to non-existent as not to matter. He must be dead by now. He was getting on for sixty when Granny died. He'd be well into his nineties now, if he hadn't been taken down by cancer or a heart attack or any of the other usual suspects, and assuming he hadn't been hit by the proverbial bus in the meantime. Sophie's fairly sure that there must have been quite a few buses – and other things – aimed Bond's way over the years.

"Is it obvious?" Hetherington asks, with gentle irony. He raises an eyebrow at her, and reaches for a biscuit. Sophie notices that he takes an innocent-looking cream-coloured macaron rather than one of the violent pink beetroot ones. She decides she'd rather not ask what's in it. Somehow, she doesn't think Hetherington's tastes run to anything as simple as vanilla.

"I told you that I have a clear memory of Mr Bond on the day of my grandmother's funeral," Sophie says. She bites her lip, trying to find the right words. "There was a look in his eye that day that frankly terrified me. He was always grim and forbidding around my sister and me, at least until Jeannie joined your lot. But the way he was that day was something else again. He looked as though he could kill everyone in the room in seconds, and without a second thought. Seeing that in someone's eyes, and knowing that that person almost certainly has the ability to follow through on it, well, it's not something one forgets quickly."

"Or at all, I should imagine," Hetherington says, as though the subject is of purely academic interest to him and quite outside his personal experience.

"Or at all," Sophie agrees.

Hetherington sips his tea. "And then there's your sister's behaviour to consider," he continues carefully, holding his cup absently in the air just short of his lips instead of returning it to its saucer. Is it a coincidence that he does so just as he asks this question? It's as though he's hiding behind it. "What was she like on the day of the funeral? Did she spend much time with Bond, or talk to him at all?"

"How should I-" Sophie begins, but she swallows the rest of the sentence. "Yes, she did talk to Mr Bond. I was cross with her because she went off with him at the beginning of the wake, and I was left to deal with Mother, and all the other guests. They both reappeared again later and acted as if nothing had happened."

"I'm sure," says Hetherington. "That is most interesting, Dr Bolling. Most interesting indeed." He says it in such a way that implies it's anything _but_ interesting, but there's no mistaking the gleam in his eye.

She's told him what he wanted to hear. That's obvious. Sophie half-wishes that she knew the significance of what she's just said, and half-hopes that she never finds out.

Hetherington places his cup very deliberately back in its saucer. "Dr Bolling," he says, "I wonder if perhaps you'd care to accompany me upstairs. There's something that I think you should see."

Sophie almost laughs out loud. If they were both thirty or forty years younger, she'd be inclined to make a joke about his inviting her up to see his etchings.

Possibly, this thought also crosses Hetherington's mind, because he adds, "My intentions are honourable, I assure you."

This time, it's Sophie's turn to smile – a polite smile, as warm as this situation deserves. "I'd be most interested, Mr Hetherington." She takes one last sip of her tea, leaves the cup in its saucer, and says,"  Please lead the way."

She gets to her feet, and waits for Hetherington to rise laboriously from his chair. Once he's properly on his feet, he stands straight enough for a man of his age, but Sophie isn't surprised when he reaches into the depths of the cast iron umbrella stand by the door and retrieves a silver-handled ebony cane from amongst the umbrellas. It's almost a fashion item, of the conservative, quietly well-heeled variety, but Hetherington leans on it heavily as he makes his slow way to the door. He opens the door and then steps back to let her go through first, all old-fashioned courtesy.

"Just follow the hallway along to the end. I'll be right behind you," he says.

Sophie does as he tells her, but she keeps her pace as slow as she can, and listens to his cane thumping on the carpet behind her with each alternate step. As she reaches the end of the hallway, Sophie realises that she hasn't seen a flight of stairs anywhere. All that is to be seen at this end of the hallway is a set of closed double doors – painted a tastefully bland shade of cream – opposite and slightly off to one side from the front door. The stairs must be on the other side of the doors, so she stops there, and waits for Hetherington to catch up.

He's panting with exertion by the time he arrives in front of the doors. Sophie doesn't want to feel sorry for him, but she can't stop a tiny pang. She remembers all too clearly what it was like for her mother, and her grandmothers, when they reached an age where their bodies simply couldn't keep up with their thoughts and desires any more.

Sophie knows that such an age is… not fast approaching, but definitely approaching, for her. She doesn't want to die still wondering about what happened to Jeannie, as her mother did.

Hetherington reaches forward with a finger outstretched and touches _something_ on the wall where it meets the doorframe. When he moves his hand back, Sophie can't see anything, so she's left to wonder what Hetherington pressed: a notch in the wood? Some sort of concealed panel? Or something to do with the paint itself? Or could it be-

The doors slide open to reveal a small room with gleaming stainless steel walls polished to such a high sheen that it's almost like being surrounded by mirrors.

"After you," Hetherington says, gesturing for her to precede him.

Sophie gets into the lift, because of course that's what it is.

"The stairs were becoming something of a problem for me," Hetherington explains as he follows her into the lift and presses a button on the control panel, "so in the end it just seemed easier to get rid of them and install this instead."

It seems like an entirely reasonable explanation. It's too reasonable, too easy, and only serves to remind Sophie to continue to be wary around this man, and to be wary of what he wants from her.

The lift glides smoothly to a stop, and the doors open again, to reveal the upper level of the house. Sophie steps out of the lift and looks around her. They're standing in another hallway, very nearly a replica of the one downstairs in layout, but there the similarities end. The décor is so completely unlike the careful soullessness of downstairs that Sophie is torn between surprise and utter unsurprise. The walls are covered in dark wooden panelling – original to the house, she surmises – and the windows are framed with heavy deep green drapes that can easily be drawn to block out all light.

The hallway is lined with small tables and stands, and a few glass-fronted cabinets, all of them containing _things,_ most of them pieces of technology – pieces of _obsolete_ technology, in fact. Nearest to her, Sophie recognises an early 21st Century mobile phone, one with a solid screen that doesn't project. She'd almost forgotten that such things ever existed. Next to it is… well, she _thinks_ it might be some early form of personal computer, though it's definitely from before her time. It's bulky, even by the standards of technology from her girlhood in the first years of the century, there's no monitor, and it has a wooden casing like nothing she's ever seen before.

Behind her, Hetherington clears his throat. "I'll be happy to give you a guided tour of my collection later if you wish, Dr Bolling, but first, if you'd be so good as to come with me?" He indicates a closed door in front of him, next to the lift. Once again, he opens the door and then steps aside to let her go through the doorway first. Sophie could really do without the old-fashioned manners in this particular instance, and she tries not to let her nerves get the better of her as she steps over the threshold into the unknown.

The room beyond is a sitting room of sorts, but its size and location make Sophie think that it was probably originally a bedroom. Opposite the door stands a great, old-fashioned fireplace, cold and empty and no doubt long disused. The chimneypiece above it is littered with gadgets – or pieces of them, at least. There's a comfortable-looking, never-fashionable settee under the window, the cushions a green leather that doesn't quite match the green of the drapes. A woman is sitting there. She gets to her feet as Sophie enters the room, and holds out her hand.

"Dr Bolling. My name is Eve Moneypenny. I'm glad we're able to meet today."

"Ms Moneypenny," Sophie says, shaking her hand.

Eve Moneypenny is tall, slender, elegantly attired in a wine red pencil dress – and easily as old as Charles Hetherington, if her short silver hair and softly-lined face are anything to go by, though the years seem to weigh a trifle less heavily upon her. She indicates for Sophie to take a seat beside her, while Hetherington lowers himself into one of the armchairs opposite the settee. Sophie sits, reflecting that while it may well be Hetherington's house, Moneypenny is clearly in charge of whatever is going on here.

She wonders why Moneypenny has been waiting up here, instead of joining them in the conservatory earlier. Perhaps the conversation with Hetherington was a vetting of sorts, or some sort of test. Sophie isn't sure whether to be relieved or worried that she has, apparently, passed.

"I take it I'd be right in assuming that you're in the same line of work as Mr Hetherington, Ms Moneypenny?" Sophie asks.

"Quite right," Moneypenny says. "Though it would be truer to say that I'm in the same line of work as your sister —and, especially, your grandmother."

"Oh," Sophie says, somehow managing to stop herself from blinking at that little disclosure. They're wheeling out all the big guns to deal with her.

"Now that Mr Hetherington has brought you up to speed," Moneypenny begins, "I-"

"I'm not sure that I'd put it quite like that," Sophie says firmly.

"But your conversation with him has provided you with a certain… context, shall we say?" Moneypenny suggests.

"Somewhat," Sophie concedes.

"I'd like you to take a look at this, Dr Bolling," Moneypenny says abruptly, clearly not one who subscribes to the Charles Hetherington school of subterfuge and meandering conversation. She takes a medium-sized yellow envelope from the battered-legged side table next to the settee, and hands it to Sophie.

"Should I…? Sophie asks uncertainly, nodding at the envelope in her hand. It doesn't seem like there's anything inside, until her fingers find the hard little lump in one corner.

"Open it," Moneypenny says. "The envelope itself doesn't matter."

Sophie takes Moneypenny at her word, tearing the envelope open along one side and then tipping the contents into her hand. She's aware of the feel of cold metal against her skin before she fully takes in what she's seeing, what it is that's resting there so innocently in the palm of her hand. It's a ring, a simple gold band set with a triplet of pink sapphires.

She's seen this ring before.

She glances over at Moneypenny, and of course the woman is watching her intently, trying to read her every reaction. It's probably not hard to do. One likely doesn't have to be any sort of trained intelligence officer to recognise the shock that must be showing on Sophie's face.

"Where did you get this?" she whispers.

"So you _do_ recognise it?" Moneypenny presses.

"It's my sister's," Sophie says. She draws herself up straight and looks Moneypenny properly in the eye. "But you knew that. Didn't you."

Moneypenny smiles politely. There's no warmth in it. "Even if we didn't know, you've just confirmed it," she says.

"Where did you get this?" Sophie asks again.

"It was sent recently."

" _How_ recently? And from where?" Sophie demands. Her voice cracks a little on the last word and she swallows hard. She knows it's terribly important to keep her cool with these people. She's trying to stay calm. She is. But then she lets herself think the question again, and every other consideration goes by the wayside: what if Jeannie is still alive?

"The better question is not 'From where?' but 'To whom?'" Charles Hetherington says into the silence that follows.

Sophie looks over at him sharply, but he looks just as harmlessly pleasant as ever. He's holding out another envelope. This one's smaller, made of thin white paper that's creased and grubby around the edges, obviously used. She takes it. It's been posted the old-fashioned way, with a printed address label on the front and an actual stamp, complete with perforated edges, in the corner. At any other time, the historian in Sophie would be immediately distracted by something so deliciously antiquated still in use in the modern world. But her first sight of the address on the label stops her dead. It's her address, with her name above it.

"Why haven't I seen this before?" she asks.

"It needed to be… checked first," Hetherington says with a small, apologetic smile.

He's playing the role of the good cop with aplomb, but his performance only serves to remind Sophie to keep her eye on the bad cop at the other end of the settee.

"You're keeping watch on me," she says, but not to Hetherington. It's an accusation, and Sophie's not going to politely pretend that it's anything else.

Moneypenny returns her gaze steadily, unmoved. "We're keeping an eye on your communications. Not so much who you talk to, though. It's more a case of who talks to you. And, obviously, we're keeping an eye on what's sent to you."

"And it appears that you've been doing this – spying on me – for some time."

"You've been watched for some considerable time, yes," Moneypenny agrees, without a hint of apology.

"Why? It's been more than twenty years since my sister disappeared, and she's the only reason you could possibly have for 'keeping an eye' on me, as you put it. You could have – should have – ceased your _surveillance of a private citizen_ long ago."

"And yet this ring still turned up, even after more than twenty years," Moneypenny points out with infuriating calm.

"Yes," Sophie says, and suddenly feels as if she might cry. She looks down at the ring in her hand. It looks just as it did when she last saw it, on her sister's hand during Jeannie's final visit to Oxford. And it looks just as it did on that day almost fifty years ago, when Sophie gave it to her little sister half as a birthday-cum-going away present, half as a joke that only the two of them would understand.

"Could you take a look at the envelope?" Hetherington asks gently, leaning forward in his seat. "Is there anything at all about it that seems significant to you?"

"You mean apart from my name and address on the front?" Sophie shoots back, and immediately regrets her lack of restraint. Open hostility won't achieve anything, and perhaps may hinder her efforts to get even a little more information out of Hetherington and Moneypenny. Calm. She needs to keep calm.

She turns the envelope over. The back is blank, which comes as no real surprise. People sending Mysterious Objects through the post rarely provide a return address. It's a well-known fact. She chokes back a slightly hysterical giggle, and flips the envelope back over to inspect the front. There's her name and address in black ink, slightly smudged. As she told Hetherington, there truly is nothing remarkable about that, apart from the fact that it's there at all. The stamp, though. That _is_ remarkable. She wasn't aware that any country was even producing stamps any more, except as special collectors' items that no one would ever dream of actually using on an envelope. This stamp isn't from any collectors' set. It's a plain blue and white, the printed image just slightly off-centre. "Ethiopia" is emblazoned down the right side of the stamp, which is, apparently, worth "50,000."

Sophie looks up. "I see that someone spent 50,000 birr on a postage stamp recently," she says to Hetherington. "Is there anything else I'm supposed to be looking at?"

"Try looking at the postmark," Moneypenny says.

Sophie looks. The postmark is in thick black ink, obscuring much of the left side of the stamp. The location in which the envelope was posted – Addis Ababa – is easy enough to identify, but the date is harder to make out. June, it looks like.

"It was posted last month from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia," Sophie says. "Is any of that supposed to mean anything to me?"

"On the seventeenth of last month, to be precise," Moneypenny corrects. "Is that date, the seventeenth of June, significant to you at all?"

"It's exactly a week before my sister's birthday, but I'm sure you're already…" She pauses, wondering. It can't be a coincidence, can it? She swallows hard, trying to make it look like she's simply fighting not to let her emotions overcome her, and makes herself finish the sentence: "… more than aware of that."

Sophie looks down at the ring and the envelope, pretending to take a moment to pull herself together while her mind races frantically. It has to be a coincidence, but how can it be? Who else could possibly know that she gave that ring to her sister a week before her sister's birthday forty-six years ago?

"I'm sorry," Moneypenny says, and her voice is softer now, or less hard, at least. "But you understand that we need to ask you about this. There's a chance – a slim chance, a remote chance, but still a chance – that your sister is still alive somewhere out there."

Sophie lets out a deep breath and closes her eyes for a long moment before answering, but she looks Moneypenny squarely in the eye when she says, "Yes, I understand. Was there anything else in the envelope with the ring?"

"Nothing, apart from some wadded paper to cushion the ring and disguise its shape. It's been thoroughly checked, and it seems to be packing material and nothing more significant."

Sophie nods. "I remember the ring. I gave it to my sister when we were young, and she wore it often. It must have been sent to me because I would be sure to recognise it. I don't have any idea why it would have been sent from Ethiopia, though." Her voice sounds sincere, she's pretty sure. What she says is certainly true enough. So far as it goes.

"I can provide the answer to that part, at least," Hetherington says, and there's a hint of boyish enthusiasm in his tone. He likes showing off, that much is obvious. "It's because Ethiopia is one of the few places left on the planet from which one can send a package and make sure it has a postmark on it," he continues cheerfully, ignoring Moneypenny's sudden frown. "It's highly unlikely that your sister would have sent it herself. Most likely, it passed through several different hands in several different countries before some seemingly anonymous local person lodged it at the post office in Addis Ababa."

"So… whoever sent it wanted us to know where it was sent from," Sophie says slowly.

"Where and _when_ ," Hetherington emphasises.

Sophie ponders this for a moment. And then she ponders a few other details that have been revealed – and not revealed – today. She looks from Hetherington to Moneypenny, and then back at Hetherington again. "If my sister's ring has just turned up like this, then your questions to me about it – and about her – are understandable. But I still don't quite get the rest of it. Why ask me about my grandmother, and about James Bond? They were both long gone, one way or another, by the time my sister disappeared. What possible connection can there be?"

Her question is met with a resounding silence. Moneypenny's impassive look becomes sterner, and grimmer. She and Hetherington don't look at each other. They very _carefully and pointedly_ don't look at each other.

"Granny died. I was there at the funeral. I saw the body. There's no disputing that. Jeannie was there too. And so was Mr Bond." They're simple statements, all of them. Nothing much by themselves, but all together they add up to… what, precisely? "You never found out what happened to Bond, did you? You told me that, Mr Hetherington," Sophie says. She doesn't wait for him to answer but makes herself plunge on, even though she can't quite see exactly where she's going with this yet. "You still don't know for sure what happened to him any more than you know for sure what happened to my sister. Could it be that you think that there's some sort of connection between his disappearance and hers?"

Sophie claps her hand over her mouth, the envelope fluttering unheeded to the floor as her eyes widen in shock. Now that she's arrived at the question it's so _very_ obvious. She's shocked, horrified, and terribly, painfully hopeful. She stares at them, one and then the other. Somehow, the possibility of a connection with Bond has made the idea of her sister being out there somewhere that much more concrete. By herself, Jeannie's insubstantial, a ghost who's not much more than a dear memory. It just seems so unlikely that she could have lasted by herself indefinitely. Jeannie as part of a team, though, with someone else to watch her back… That's something else again, even if the other half of the team must be long gone by now. It's easier for Sophie's brain to wrap around the idea. The possibility of it. The hope.

She turns to Hetherington. He looks back at her, mainly because, Sophie thinks, that after half a century in the secret service he's learned a thing or two about not flinching from things much more deadly than a look from her. He really should have brought the tea service up with him, though, because now he has nothing to hide behind.

"You said that there have been no definite sightings of James Bond since the day of my grandmother's funeral," Sophie says, holding his gaze so he doesn't have an excuse to look away.

"No _verifiable_ sightings," Hetherington corrects.

"So does that mean that there have been some _unverifiable_ sightings? Or some form of contact with Bond that didn't involve anyone actually seeing him?"

The corners of Hetherington's mouth curl up in a thin smile. "I really can't imagine why you were never scouted," he says, sounding unsettlingly like a proud schoolmaster with his prize student.

"My sister was his contact. Wasn't she?" Sophie says, turning back to Moneypenny.

It's a shot in the dark, but apparently it hits the target, because Moneypenny looks at her consideringly for a moment and says, "That's a very interesting theory, which I, of course, am in no position to confirm or deny."

"I see," Sophie says, though she doesn't. Not really. Not quite. They're not trying hard to hide any of this from her. In fact, they've led her carefully down this path, all but laying a trail of breadcrumbs for her to follow. Hetherington, of course, is retired, so he's really just the conduit by which the initial contact with Sophie could be made. But contact with what exactly? Or should that just be 'whom'? Moneypenny's never directly said what her current role is. She's implied that she holds the same sort of rank that Sophie's grandmother did. But even Granny had finally taken retirement by the time she was the age that Moneypenny appears to be. So…

"If I might ask, Ms Moneypenny: are you still directly employed in the… work to which you've devoted your career? Or is it possible that we're really just three old-age pensioners having a cosy little chat by the fireplace?"

Moneypenny exchanges a look with Hetherington. "Perhaps Six really should have considered scouting you," she says dryly.

"I'm glad you never did," Sophie says, utterly sincere. She spent so long being stupidly jealous of her sister, and then just as long feeling bereft and lost, but this is the first time that she's realised quite how lucky an escape she had.

It all seems like such a waste, now; she doesn't want to waste any more time dwelling on might-have-beens. That's the very least she can do for her sister – and as for the _most_ that she might be able to do… Well, that's something she _does_ need to dwell on. She needs to devote some time and thought to what she's learnt here today, and muster what resources she can — since, apparently, Hetherington and Moneypenny have rather less than the full capacity of MI6 at their command. They're probably using their own resources to spy on her, and steal any likely-looking deliveries before they ever reach her door. They must be. Maybe MI6 was watching her once, but now… Whatever their initial reasons for keeping their eye on her when Jeannie first went missing, it's a private undertaking for Hetherington and Moneypenny now.

Knowing that makes things easier. Sophie firms her lips, and her resolve.

"I really must be going," she says, and watches for their reactions.

Neither of them betrays much at her words. Moneypenny raises her eyebrows, but just a very little, affecting a look of mild curiosity.

"It was good of you to come," Hetherington says, and reaches for his cane as he begins the lengthy task of rising from his chair.

Maybe they've been expecting her to make her excuses and hightail it out of there almost since the moment she arrived. Maybe she's surprised them.

Or maybe not.

Either way, neither Moneypenny nor Hetherington objects to her statement, or tries to detain her. Nor do they try to stop her when she reaches down to retrieve the envelope from the floor and tuck it into the top of her handbag. The ring is still in her hand, the gold warm against her palm now. She closes her fingers tightly around it, and gets up.

Hetherington has finally made it onto his feet.

"Thank you for the tea, Mr Hetherington," Sophie says, stepping forward. "And the conversation. It's been… most unexpected."

"And you, Doctor Bolling," Hetherington says, taking her hand in a clasp that's not quite a handshake.

What does that mean, exactly? That the conversation has been unexpected, or that _she's_ not what he expected? Sophie manages not to ask out loud, but some of it must show on her face because Hetherington smiles then, a self-satisfied little smirk that tells her that he's well aware that he's being annoyingly cryptic.

"Dr Bolling," Moneypenny says from behind her, and Sophie drops Hetherington's hand and turns, grateful for the interruption.

Moneypenny is also standing now, and she looks Sophie right in the eye, just as she's done all along, but she hesitates before she speaks again, as though, for once, she needs to search for the right words to suit her purpose. "Dr Bolling," she says again, "there's something you need to know before you go any further."

"Uh, yes?" Sophie says cautiously. She's pretty sure that Moneypenny isn't referring to her intention to leave the house. Or not only that. She waits.

Moneypenny pauses again, perhaps weighing her words carefully before she says them. Or perhaps weighing up Sophie one last time. "I worked with James Bond for a long time," she says.

"I see," Sophie says, even though she doesn't. She's not sure what she was expecting Moneypenny to say, but it wasn't this. It's not exactly a revelation. Given this woman's age and inferred rank, she must have known Bond.

"I didn't know him well, of course," Moneypenny continues. "No one knew him well. But I understood him about as well as anyone ever did – apart from your grandmother, of course. And, possibly, your sister. She built up a connection with him over a very long time."

"She was very like my grandmother, in more than just looks," Sophie admits. She's not completely comfortable with the turn this conversation is taking, or with the ease with which Moneypenny is comparing her grandmother's and sister's relationships with Bond.

"No, she wasn't," Moneypenny contradicts. "Your sister wasn't all that much like your grandmother. Not in her work. She never would have reached the higher echelons of the organisation. Not because she wasn't any good" – Moneypenny holds up one hand as Sophie opens her mouth to make an indignant comment – "but because she wasn't suited to sending other people out to put their lives on the line when she wasn't putting her life on the line as well. I've seen what happens when you remove that sort of agent from fieldwork. I saw the effects of it at work in vivid, painful detail every single day in the years after they promoted Bond, before he… went away." She smiles, a wintery little smile that's full of sympathy and sadness. "Your sister wasn't like your grandmother, Dr Bolling. She was much more like Bond."

"I see," Sophie says, and swallows hard. Her mouth's suddenly dry.

"I never worked in the field with your sister, but I did work in the field with Bond once, the very first time I met him. He was…" Moneypenny pauses again, and looks down at her feet as if her shoe-tops hold the key to what she needs to say. Evidently, she finds inspiration there, because when she looks up again there's a gleam in her eye that wasn't there before, something bright and purposeful and proud. "You must understand, Dr Bolling, that there wasn't, and hasn't ever been, another agent quite like James Bond. If he was somehow involved in your sister's disappearance… Well, by all rights she should be dead, regardless of any other factor. But if he was… Take it from me, and I know this better than just about anyone else still alive: with Bond, the normal rules – of law, logic and even sometimes physics – tended not to apply." She smiles, briefly, but it's a warmer, slightly rueful smile this time. "Read Mr Hetherington's book. You'll see."

It's Sophie's turn to pause before speaking. She twists Jeannie's ring between her fingers, but she doesn't look down at her hands. "Thank you," she says. "I'll keep that in mind."

The three of them go down together in the lift. The doors open out onto the careful beige nothingness of the ground floor hallway, and the front door waiting just beyond. It's all Sophie can do to stop herself running towards it. Instead, she and Moneypenny both keep pace with Hetherington. Sophie can is barely able to conceal her impatience by the time they reach the door.

Moneypenny turns to her. "I'm glad you were able to come here today, Dr Bolling. Please do keep in mind what I said upstairs. And should anything more occur to you, about anything at all that you might think even slightly relevant, please contact Mr Hetherington at once."

"I will," Sophie says. She's not sure whether either of the other two believes her. She's not sure if she believes herself. It all hinges on how one defines 'relevant', really. "Goodbye, Ms Moneypenny," she says, and this time she's the one to hold out her hand. The handshake is brief, but firm. Sophie turns to the old man leaning on his cane. "Goodbye, Mr Hetherington," she says, shaking his hand in turn.

"It's been a pleasure, Doctor Bolling," he says, nodding once just before Sophie walks out the door.

Sophie walks down the front steps and along the driveway, terribly conscious that the door still hasn't shut behind her. She's about to call their bluff, to turn around and stare right back at them, when Moneypenny speaks.

"I believe you promised me some of your ghastly macarons, Q?"

"Indeed, M," Hetherington — _Q_ — replies. "You'll find the tea things laid out in the conservatory. Unless I'm very much mistaken, Madeleine should be up shortly with a fresh pot of tea."

And then the door shuts.

Sophie doesn't turn around to look until she reaches her car. The house sits there by the driveway, surrounded by fruit trees, its front door a brilliant white against the red brick walls. It looks just as innocent and boring as it did when Sophie first saw it. Was it really less than an hour ago?

She gets into her car, but she doesn't drive away immediately. She opens her hand and looks at the ring. Just looks at it. She's not sure how long she sits there, but she has to force herself to move, to stow the ring away safely in the inside zip pocket of her handbag. Then she buckles her seatbelt, turns the key in the ignition and heads off back down the laneway to the village. She doesn't stop when she gets there. She just keeps going and doesn't look back.

She needs a drink, pretty desperately, but she passes several market towns and their overly quaint and touristy little country pubs. She can't stop. There are too many thoughts in her head, going around and around and around. More than anything, she can't stop thinking about the day she gave the pink sapphire ring to Jeannie. It was a week before Jeannie's birthday, as she'd told Hetherington and Moneypenny. That much, at least, was true. But she hadn't mentioned _why_ she'd given her sister her birthday present a week early that year.

Jeannie had been about to leave Hong Kong. She'd been about to leave for England, for Cambridge, to study. It was the last day before she left, and she and Sophie had decided to take the ferry out to Grass Island, and picnic there one last time.

The ring had been a farewell present as much as it had been a birthday present. It had also been a private joke about one thing that two increasingly distant sisters still had in common. Grandmama – their father's mother – used to drive the both of them just about mad. She didn't comprehend modern life in Hong Kong. She didn't comprehend modern life at all. She was always telling them to act in a more ladylike manner, that a lady didn't do certain things before she had a ring on her finger, that a lady should wear more feminine colours, most particularly pink.

Jeannie had burst out laughing when Sophie had presented the ring to her as soon as they'd reached the green hilltop that gave the island its English name.

"Now you're all set to do _certain things_ ," Sophie had declared, choking back a laugh.

"But only in a ladylike manner," Jeannie had reminded her through her giggles. And then they'd fallen down on the grass and laughed until they cried.

That day on the island was the last time they were girls together. Their lives diverged sharply after that, to the surprise of neither of them, but every time Sophie saw Jeannie ever after, she was wearing the pink sapphire ring.

Jeannie never forgot that day, no more than Sophie has. If Jeannie's sent Sophie this ring, in an envelope postmarked on that particular date, she's banking on Sophie to remember. But remember what, exactly? Does Grass Island hold the key? Or is it something to do with Grandmama? Either way, the answer must lie in Hong Kong. Sophie's going to have to go there – and she may not have any other choice but to at least tell Moneypenny and Hetherington that much. They may no longer have the formidable assets of MI6 at their disposal, but they still have some resources, as the continued watch on her mail demonstrates only too clearly. They'll know if she suddenly takes a trip to Hong Kong. And they'll know why.

Maybe.

Or maybe she should just wait, wait until they've stopped watching her quite so closely. Even retired spies have to die of old age eventually, if nothing else gets them first.

No. Sophie knows as soon as she considers the option of waiting that it's no option at all. She's not going to wait. Her sister sent her the ring for a reason, and sent it _now_ for a reason. It's already been a month. She needs to work out how she's going to approach this. She needs to sit down and plan how she's going to get to Hong Kong, and think carefully about how much she's going to reveal to Moneypenny and Hetherington – or M and Q, as she should probably get used to thinking of them now that she is, apparently, going to enter at least the fringes of their cloak and dagger world.

But first, she needs to do some reading.

Sophie pulls over and turns into the parking area of a hotel, a rather larger hotel than any of the ones she's passed. The bar is open for the lunchtime crowd, though there doesn't seem to be much of a crowd just yet. There's no sign of anyone tending the bar, but he or she can't be far, seeing as there's a middle-aged couple seated at a table in the corner, talking quietly over pint glasses that are almost full.

Sophie takes a seat at a table in the opposite corner of the room, and gets out her hub-reader. She taps it once, and the holo-screen springs into life. It's all of three seconds before the title page of Charles Hetherington's memoir pops up before her: _Full Disclosure: A Memoir_. Sophie barely refrains from rolling her eyes. After the time she spent in Charles Hetherington's company today, she has a pretty good idea of how full the disclosures in the book are likely to be. She flips past the opening chapter, then stops, and tells the reader to search for 'Beatrice Masters' AND 'Bond' AND/OR '007'.

There are many hits. This is going to take a while, which is oddly reassuring: there's enough to the story of the two of them that even Charles Hetherington can't hide that there was something there, something that kept Bond coming back to Hong Kong for fifteen years. Something that, perhaps, pushed him over the edge into disappearing once there was nothing for him to come back to Hong Kong for any more.

Sophie reads a page two, and then a page or two more, and leans back in her chair, blinking. Her mind is a whirl of gunfire and high speed chases, beautiful women and exotic locations, and high stakes everything. Moneypenny wasn't kidding when she mentioned that the rules tended not to apply to James Bond. And this is, no doubt, the highly censored version!

Sophie thinks again about how Moneypenny spoke of Bond – and Hetherington, too, in his own way. They said his name almost reverently, like that of a legend, or like a hero out of a story. And like a hero, almost like Arthur himself, they expected that Bond would somehow return at the hour of greatest need.

Sophie had never seen that in the grim-faced man who'd appeared out of nowhere on her grandmother's doorstep far too often for her liking. Eliciting that reaction from her was entirely intentional on his part, she realises now. That says almost as much about him, and about his relationship with her grandmother, as anything that Moneypenny and Hetherington told her today. It probably says more about the real Bond than any of the exploits that Hetherington has recorded in his memoir.

Bond must be dead by now. He'd have to be in his nineties, in the remote likelihood that he's still alive. In his nineties, and maybe living on a tiny island, just off the Sai Kung Peninsula, that's been all but abandoned since the ferry services closed down decades ago. And maybe living there with a woman who was once Sophie's sister. A woman who always looked even more like their grandmother than Sophie does but who Sophie probably wouldn't recognise at all now.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Well, like any good hero, James Bond will never die so long as he's kept alive in the collective imagination of the general public. Hetherington's book is going to make a huge splash in publishing circles without any doubt. There's already talk of a special limited edition to be printed on paper — _paper_ — and bound in leather. James Bond won't be dying anytime soon if Charles Hetherington has any say in the matter..

There's a discreet tap at her elbow, and Sophie looks up hurriedly at the waiter standing there. He's young, and earnest-looking, and probably new to this job in particular as well as wet behind the ears in general. Before Sophie has a chance to order anything he launches into what is clearly a rehearsed speech:

"May I get you anything, madam? A drink, and perhaps something to eat. Our lunch specials today are-"

Sophie holds up a hand to stem the flow of words. "Just a drink for now," she says, and she can't stop the tiny grin that tugs at the corner of her mouth as she adds, "I'll have a martini, please. Shaken, not stirred."


End file.
